A giant African and a self-exiled Frankish Jew play a variant of the "skin game" as they wander the area that is now Ukraine. They become involved in a exiles attempt to avenge family and regain power. Quite entertaining. Somewhat like Farffd and the Grey Mouser, but without magic. Author says his working title was "Jews with Swords."

3.5 stars Quick and fun (though sometimes intensely violent) and original. Chabon surely is talented. I like the title he wanted to use, as he explains in his afterward, but I don't want to spoil it for you so I won't say it here. ( )

An entertaining if slightly superficial adventure romp from an author not usually inclined to the genre. Michael Chabon, in his Afterword, freely admits that it is unusual for "a writer of my literary training, generation and pretensions to be writing stories featuring anybody with swords" (pg. 199). This unease or unfamiliarity shows in that Chabon doesn't seem to know what he wants to do with Gentlemen of the Road. Consequently, he relies on his typical literary crutches – there is a lot of purple prose – and the plentiful (Pratchett-esque) humour betrays this self-consciousness.

It is a shame, for there is merit in writing an adventure story for the more intellectual reader (though it would always remain a small niche). The potential richness of characters, setting and plotlines can lend itself to heady interpretive themes and waxing lyrical. But Chabon's plot is quite linear and the book too short for the plot points to pivot with much grace. It is further hindered by the overwrought prosing, which often derails the narrative. It never seems rushed or unimaginative, just insubstantial (though the illustrations by Gary Gianni were a nice touch). I suspect Chabon wrote this as a sort of literary exercise and wanted to finish it so he could move on to his next 'proper' book.

This relegation of adventure stories to a lesser rung is unfortunate, for storytelling is one of the oldest arts (Chabon's Afterword rightly traces its lineage to the Odyssey and beyond) and the emotions it evokes can be profound. On page 167, one character notices an old atlas that had "enchanted her as a child", and wistfully remembers "its maps and preposterous anatomies and flat-foot descriptions of miracles and wonders, page after page of cities to visit and peoples to live among and selves to invent, out there, beyond the margins of her life, along the roads and in the kingdoms." That is the magic and wonder that any good adventure or fantasy book can evoke. New worlds to explore, and not vast distances away, but here, in the palms of your hands! It is the one imperishable quality of literature in general, allowing people to live other lives in their own minds. So to apologise for the genre where the conduit to wonder is the sturdiest and most direct is quite unnecessary. A society which forgets the possibility of wonder to be found in what are essentially "bundle[s] of wood pulp, sewn and glued and stained with blobs of pigment and resin" (pg. 204) would be a bleak and functional society, unredeemed by art. Or, as one of Chabon's characters says, "There was no hope for an empire that lost the will to prosecute the grand and awful business of adventure." (pg. 176). It doesn't have to be Gentlemen of the Road, but don't ever be afraid to pick up a book and go on a journey. ( )

If Robert E. Howard had been writing his historical adventure fiction at the beginning of the 21st century instead of toward the beginning of the 20th, this book might very well have come from his pen. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the Howard collection "Sword Woman."Still, while I'm recommending it, it's not without its flaws - some of those the same as I feel the Howard stories contain. The narrative can get bogged down in technical details that impede the flow of the tale, and the characterization is fairly basic. The 'big reveal' here is also pretty obvious right from the beginning.

This is a fun little book, but it's really not in the same category as 'Yiddish Policeman' or 'Kavalier & Clay."( )

Chabon is one of my favorite authors, and as such, I'll read just about everything he releases. So when I saw this, I had to pick it up.

This is a "serial" novel of a swashbuckling tale set in the 10th Century Southwest Russia. Chabon said that his working title when he was writing these stories was, "Jews with Swords". When he learned of the history of this area and of the Jewish Khazar kingdoms, he was compelled to research and write about this era.

The main characters are Amram (an African warrior/mercenary) and his friend and partner Zelikman (a German physician). During their travels, looking for work and adventure, they find themselves in the middle of a political power struggle and war in the kingdom of Arram. The series of what I would call vignettes were originally published in serial form in the New York Times magazine. While all connected, as you would expect from a magazine serial, they seemed a little disjointed to me in full book form, as if there were some missing pieces in between each section. At any rate, it was a very enjoyable read. It was interesting reading about the adventure/rogue tropes set against a society and geography that was completely new to me.

The plot and voice of “Gentlemen of the Road” recall the stories found in 19th-century dime novels and the fantastic escapades invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard. Gary Gianni’s drawings highlight particularly thrilling moments, and with chapter titles like “On the Observance of the Fourth Commandment Among Horse Thieves” and “On Swimming to the Library at the Heart of the World,” Chabon works old-fashioned niceties into a postmodern pastiche.

Despising all my glory, abandoning my high estate, leaving my family, I would go over mountains and hills, through seas and lands, till I should arrive at the place where my Lord the King resides, that i might see not only his glory and magnificence, and that of his servants and ministers, but also the tranquility of the Israelites. On beholding this my eyes would brighten, my reins would exult, my lips would pour forth praises to God, who has not withdrawn his favor from his afflicted ones.—letter of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut,minister of the Caliph of Spain, to Joseph,ruler of Khazaria, circa 960

From now on, I'll describe the cities to you," the Khan had said, "in your journeys you will see if they exist."—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Dedication

Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.

À Michael Moorcock

First words

For numberless years a myna had astounded travelers to the caravansary with its ability to spew indecencies in ten languages, and before the fight broke out everyone assumed the old blue-tongued devil on its perch by the fireplace was the one who maligned the giant African with such foulness and verve.

Quotations

On that plain of mud and grass and staring faces, along the battlements and bartizans of the walls of Atil barbed with pikemen and archers, from the Black Sea to the Sea of Khazar, from the Urals to the Caucasus, there was no sound but the wind in the grass, the clop of a sidestepping horse, the broken breathing of the Little Elephant, Filaq, with whom they had marched and slept and shivered, the son, the prince they had raised up on their sholders to rule them as their bek, the revenger of the rape of their sisters and teh burning of their houses and the pillage of their goods. All Zelikman's disdain, all his resentment toward the foul-mouthed spoiled stripling who had plagued him since the rescue at the carvansary vanished with the double shock of the elephant's slaughter and the revelation. In their place he felt only pity for a white thing flecked with mud, a motherless girl, drooping in the grip of the soldier like a captured flag.

Last words

And then they took the first road that led out of the city, unmindful of whether it turned east or south, their direction a question of no interest to either of them, their destination already intimately known, each of them wrapped deep in his thick fur robes and in the solitude that they had somehow contrived to share.

Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures–from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories–in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade’s most tantalizing tales.

They’re an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can–as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they’ve left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.

None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there–along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of–will be much more than half the fun.

"They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can - as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they've left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances."
"None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and fool-hardy bravado ... not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there - along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay; and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of - will be much more than half the fun."--BOOK JACKET.… (more)